WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/
-- Concentric Sky (makers of Badgr) and Credential Engine have
announced a pioneering new collaboration that will make it possible
for credential issuers worldwide to export their open badge-backed
professional learning achievements from Badgr's stackable,
credential pathways and then publish them into Credential Engine's
global Registry. This unprecedented integration will empower
learners and issuers to better understand how their credentials and
professional learning journeys connect with opportunities for
career advancement, continued learning, and the more expansive
world of open data.
Badgr, the world's fastest-growing digital credential network,
currently supports over 25,000 digital badge issuers, including
organizations like Walmart, Facebook, Microsoft, Western Governors University, the University of North Texas, and thousands more
spanning over 160 countries. Every year these learner-centric
organizations award millions of open, skills-aligned
micro-credentials (sometimes referred to as digital badges) to
millions of learners around the world in recognition of their
growing and evolving skills and competencies.
Many of the micro-credentials issued through the Badgr platform
are assembled into stackable learning journeys using Badgr's
easy-to-understand Pathways tools. These pathways are stackable
both within and across organizational boundaries and can combine
awards from multiple issuing platforms, allowing issuers to build
programs that include credentials and certifications from a wide
array of trusted, third-party organizations. For example, the
Upskill San Antonio program addresses the needs of frontline
workers by scaffolding their upskilling and reskilling programs
into pathways that guide learners while providing them with
portable, digital credentials that they may use to send verifiable
signals of success to employers. If the steps in a learner's
journey are thought of as individual threads, when combined into
interoperable learner records, they can be seen as creating a rich
tapestry of skills and proficiencies that have previously been
difficult for employers to visualize and for learners to
communicate.
This tapestry can be made even more useful to learners by
combining data from many different types of credentials, skills,
and other components of education and career pathways expressed
using the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), a
vocabulary of over 500 terms that are useful in making assertions
about a credential and its relationships to other entities. Within
the Registry, credentials are linked to other parts of the
credentialing ecosystem such as assessments, learning
opportunities, and a myriad of conceptual frameworks such as
competencies, job skills, and formal classifications of occupations
and instructional programs.
Badgr's collaboration with Credential Engine leverages the power
of Open Badges, CTDL Pathways, and Badgr's open infrastructure
which all share a common digital format. This mutually-beneficial
alignment facilitates the discovery of new and emerging
opportunities across the open Web and among system integrations,
including those among the hundreds of thousands of existing
distinct data points related to credentials and competencies that
Credential Engine has already established.
Soon, credential issuers will have the ability to connect their
machine-readable digital badges and learning pathways from Badgr
with Credential Engine's expansive structure of open data. Not only
will this powerful combination of data help learners, professional
development providers (like universities and colleges), and
employers access a shared registry of verifiable professional
credentials, it will also unlock new opportunities critical for
helping the economy rebound from a catastrophic worldwide
recession.
"The value of credentials and skills are increased when they are
clearly understood in the context of education and career
pathways," said Jeanne Kitchens,
chief technology services officer for Credential Engine. "Combining
the power of Badgr Pathways and Credential Engine technologies
provides innovative solutions to address the needs of learners,
workers, employers, and credential offerers who want better
information and data that impacts life, hiring, and how education
and training are developed. These technologies support the
capabilities desired by all of these users for interoperability and
search and discovery on the open Web."
"The interoperability of learning pathway and skill data is
critical in building an education-to-career pipeline that works to
fill positions quickly, with increasing equity and opportunity for
workers. Concentric Sky is proud to work with Credential Engine and
a wide community of educational institutions, employers, and public
entities to develop and implement the data interoperability
standards that will drive the next generation of skills-based
education and hiring." Says Nate Otto, Director of the Badgr
Platform.
To learn more about this collaboration, visit badgr.com or
credentialengine.org.
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About Badgr and Concentric Sky:
Badgr is a global ecosystem of digital credentialing and stackable
pathway tools designed for individuals and organizations of all
sizes. Badgr serves millions of users and provides recognition from
over 25,000 issuing organizations spanning more than 160 countries.
Badgr is a registered trademark of Concentric Sky, an award-winning
software development firm with a 15-year track record of enterprise
product design and innovation around open technology standards. For
more information about Concentric Sky, visit
http://www.concentricsky.com
About Credential Engine:
Credential Engine is a non-profit whose mission is to create
credential transparency, reveal the credential marketplace,
increase credential literacy, and empower everyone to make more
informed decisions about credentials and their value. To discover
credentials in the Registry, visit the Credential Finder
https://credentialfinder.org.
SOURCE Concentric Sky